Autumn Snow
by Cocoalata
Summary: Edward secretly sneaks away to mourn for someone who has been dead for centuries.


**Autumn Snow**

Many humans are afraid of graveyards, especially in the dark. There is nothing scary about them, though. I think a graveyard could be quite a good place for relaxing if the place didn't remind me of what I am with every little step I take. They make me feel guilty. I have no right to be alive while others rest beneath my restless feet.

I once thought about this in a different way. It seems so long ago… An eternity. I thought different about many things then – in fact, _I_ was different. I envied the dead, sometimes thinking that _they_ had no right to sleep in peace while I had to live this half-life, always anxious, trapped in all the lies that were necessary to protect myself and my family.

But there is another reason why graveyards make me feel bad. All the dead people – they don't mean anything to me. People die. It's been like that since there has been life. Nothing I can change. Nothing I have to change. Nothing I want to change.

There is only one human whose death I really bemoan. And the sad thing is that I can not visit her. There is no pretty headstone which says "Here rests Elizabeth Masen. Rest in peace, your mourning family." Maybe there is a hidden, long forgotten mass grave somewhere, but I doubt it. It's more likely they burnt her and the others.

Carlisle doesn't know what I'm doing when I'm gone – the others do, though. One of the first things I learnt as a vampire was not to mourn for my mother in front of him. It makes him feel guilty. He says that if he couldn't save her, he should at least have made sure that there was a small, private place her son could visit.

It's crazy. I don't blame Carlisle – how could I? He had other things to deal with - having to keep a newborn from sucking the whole town's blood, for example. She was a stranger to him. As she was to everybody… Even my father didn't know her. He loved a woman that didn't exist, a mask she created to show the world.

I dare to say that I am – and was – the only person on earth who was allowed to see the real Elizabeth. She was not only a woman, a wife, or a mother. She was something silly people would describe as "a witch". But there was nothing supernatural about her. She was just special.

She herself called it "enlightened". She said she was part of some miraculous group of humans who could see the truth behind the visible because they were _gifted_. With her eyes she saw a different world than I did. Maybe it was true. Maybe she really had some strange gift. The more time passes, the more likely it seems to me. There are many strange things in the world; nobody knows that better than me.

I wasn't gifted. I guess she was disappointed because I was just a normal person like my father and everybody else. But she never said or did anything to make me feel her disappointment. I remember one day I asked her about it. She said it didn't matter to her whether I was enlightened or not because I was her little boy and she loved me more than anything else in the world.

Sometimes she would disappear during the night and return before dawn. She never told me where she went, but afterward she was thoughtful and somehow strange. It frightened me when I was a kid, but when I grew up I admired her. I believed she was an angel or some creature of light that didn't belong on earth. I know better now.

Elizabeth Masen was brilliant. She questioned everything – the lifestyle, the society, God. Not the world she lived in was wrong for her but the time. If she had been a man and lived a few decades later then maybe she could have been respected as a philosopher or even founded a new belief.

But that is only an 'if'. She lived when she lived and she died when she died. There are many 'if's in the world and they won't change a thing. And I'm glad that she was who she was because I wouldn't have wanted another mother. She was the strongest person I knew and one of the strongest I know today. Besides, she was a good, loving mother.

I walk between the graves, looking for the right place. Finally, I find a nice grave in a hidden corner underneath an old oak tree. There are no dry flowers, no candle. 'Jane River, 1903 - 1937', says the gray, cold stone. About her age. I'm sure she would have liked the place – she loved plants.

I close my eyes. I don't pray. I just stand in perfect silence, thinking of nothing. I drop the white rose I've been clutching. After looking at it for another minute, I turn around and walk away. It begins to snow. Snowflakes are falling on my skin, but they don't melt. One lands under my left eye, like a white, frozen tear. I don't wipe it away. It is the most appropriate thing for me to do now for vampires can't cry.


End file.
